Is it a bird? Is it a plane...?

No. It's the Incredible Sulk.

This monster takes on many incarnations. You may have one lurking across the room on the other sofa at this very moment, sighing audibly whenever your laptop keys click slightly louder than a gnat's stiff knee joint. It has probably already cranked up the volume on the TV and muttered, "Is it too much to ask to be able to hear The News?" Whatever you do, do not look over at it - and control your sniggers.

Apprentice monsters adopt the posture of a ricket-afflicted Victorian clerk; hunched shoulders, a lowered gaze. They grow their hair over their faces and communicate only in a sullen mumble - like grumpy ventriloquists. Favourite expressions include It's SO unfair! But everyone else does! It's my room anyway! You just don't understand! And so on ... (Assume all pronouncements end with an exclamation mark).

Younger Incredible Sulks have yet to perfect the pervading, angst-inducing silence that indicates their displeasure, preferring to rely on a steady percussive beat of slammed doors, broken dishes, and Radio 1 turned to maximum volume.

Advanced Incredible Sulks work on the premise that silence throbs.

Perhaps Incredible Sulk rampages round your house when its team has lost to Manchester United? Does it lie moaning on the bed? A mantra that sounds something like "There is no way that was a penalty/foul/offside*." (*Delete as appropriate).

Maybe your Incredible Sulk emanates overtly hostile gamma rays? Perhaps it takes to its bed for whole weekends? The bedroom door firmly shut, the occasional - but very significant - heavy creak of floorboards and the flushing of a toilet the only physical manifestations of this malign presence.

Incredible Sulks are delighted when you get that job you wanted so badly or if you are excited about something. They are especially fond of birthdays, Mother's Day and Christmas. These important dates are marked in red on the calendar as superb sulking opportunities.

Take Incredible Sulks to the theatre, ballet and cinema. This is something they adore. An expensive restaurant will do just as well - though, if you wish your monster to display their full sulking capabilities, ensure that the waiters are attentive and the room candle-lit.

The Incredible Sulk will transform into a large lump of granite; glowering and darkest grey. Above its head hovers a radioactive cloud of extreme displeasure. There are speech bubbles, with dots to signify thoughts: I am not enjoying this, I don't want to be here, I especially don't want to be here with you.

Hold your breath and count to ten. This cloud is poisonous if inhaled.

The Saddest Story in the World

Last year, I was working as Poetry Waitress ("So, ladies, what can I get you? Tea? Coffee? And would you like a sonnet with that?") when an elderly lady told me the most tragic story I have ever heard.

I have just re-read The Aeneid and even Chapter 4, where Dido (a name ripe for graffiti) throws herself onto the funeral pyre is nowhere near as sad as The Tale of Brownie.

Brownie was the only hen hatched from seven eggs in an airing cupboard in a small terraced house in Prescot in 1948. Her brothers were destined for pies, stews and rissoles, but Brownie was spoiled. She was cuddled, petted, never fed egg sandwiches - What? Encourage cannibalism? - and nested in a tea-chest by the kitchen range at night.

When the children came home from school, the first thing they asked for was Brownie. They kissed her before they went to bed. At weekends, they followed her up and down the alley as she pecked in the gutter for scraps.

Over time, Brownie developed a nervous complaint that caused her feathers to moult. The children were distraught. Brownie shivered with cold.

The children's mother knitted Brownie a pullover out of green wool. (She was a woman unbound by stereotype or cliché). Brownie regained her joie de vivre.

For a day.

The next morning, the children ran into the kitchen to greet their pet and found her hanging by the neck, swinging from the mantlepiece, strangled by her new pullover.

Now, can you think of a single story that is sadder than that?

Being Bad

Why does being bad feel so good?

At school being bad at hockey was liberating. (I once let in a goal because I was chatting to a defender about how much I hated the games teacher, but the goal was disallowed because it "had been hit from too far away" - ie. the opposite goal post). Being bad at maths meant I could torment the maths teacher. ("I'm sorry, Sir, but I just don't believe in negative numbers.")

Being bad at filing awarded me great satisfaction in a Commercial Estate Agents. I doubt whether they ever found the details for 76, Hillcrest Rise. Ha!

Occasionally - children, please note the occasionally - going to bed without brushing my teeth feels O! so rebellious.

Bad language - swearing. What can possibly be bad about swearing when it's so bloody satisfying?

Misusing apostrophes deliberately - to annoy the pedantic old crows amongst your friends - blissful.

Creating fake personas on social networking and blogging sites - not that I'd ever do anything quite as bad as that, you understand - must be too, too delicious ...

I realise that I am only scraping the surface of Badness. I must try harder; affairs, bank heists, forgeries of Great Works of Art, graffiti (witty, of course), fiddling my expenses.

But of course, the ideal career beckons ...

The Banned List #4

Disgruntled Poets

I'm going off piste with this one, but I really do think that Disgruntled Poets (sp. Disgruntatum Poeticum) should be on the Banned List.

Only today, via carrier pigeon (email is so last year, dear) I received the following missive:

I'll beat the bleeping bleep out of you, you slimy, illiterate, talentless bleep... be warned; I've done time and been birched for sorting out bleeps like you who got under my skin ...

Five minutes later, another exhausted-looking pigeon arrived.

You think you are so bleeping witty but believe me when you are picking your bleeping teeth off the floor or lying on a hospital bed wondering were (sic) your bleeping kneecaps went to you wont (sic) be bleeping laughing...

And so on.

So far, so predictable. But I have a question that needs answering. In all my years of writing, performing and teaching, and having met hundreds of truly gorgeous, delicious, kind, funny, unusual, inspiring, modest, anxious, confident, sweet, talented, clever, boringly normal, barking mad poets of all genders, I have only ever met four (count 'em, four) Disgruntled Poets.

And all four of them have been men of a certain age.

I wonder if we could devise an equation to identify them? After all, they do not immediately appear Disgruntled. You are fooled by perfectly normal behaviour then suddenly - YIKES! - you are drowning in pigeon shit, parchment and feathers ...

The Banned List #3

An occasional list of things that should be banned in creative writing ...

1. It was an easy mistake, but it brought terrible consequences ... Prior to the shocking event ... In one brief, awful moment, fate wreaked its terrible revenge ... In one doomed moment ... That fateful night ...

And all of the above in one page of story with not even a hint of what this dreadful event is except that it will, quite undoubtedly, be dreadful. Alas, any narrative tension or element of surprise the author was hoping to create has vanished.

When I come across writing like this, I image the soundtrack accompanying it to be of thundering, menacing chords on a pipe organ - Dah-duh-DAAAAAHHHHHH! Of course, when the vampire does rip out the throat of the protagonist, it comes as somewhat of a relief. Thank goodness! He's dead! Hurrah! Now, finally, I can stop anticipating this dreadful event which I was - frankly - bored silly waiting for.

2. The personification of inanimate objects. Well, I object. No, the cast iron stove did not wrap its warm, comforting arms around her. Nor was he pulled to the floor by the cruel hands of gravity.

3. Over-direction in bizarre detail. The hand which was attached to his heavily tattooed arm prodded the garments of his wonderment. With this left hand he then reached for his keys, whilst holding a bottle of lager between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, raising his left eyebrow quizzically at the door which faced due west in an apartment block built in the 1960s by Polish labourers, the handle of which had to be turned in the opposite direction to which you would normally assume as the lock had been fitted back-to-front, producing a sigh of exasperation from our hero (and our reader).

We Live in Dangerous Times

So, the security level has been raised to "severe". This means, says a Government spokesman, that we suspect a terror attack is about to happen, but we don't know when or where. And we don't think it's iminent either.

That's us told.

Demon Aunt phoned. "MFI don't know what they're talking about, do they?"

MFI?

"I think they're just putting the willies up us."

MFI?

"Yes, they're eavesdropping on everyone's conversations these days, you know. We're all under suspicion."

This is true. I cannot be the only person to have noticed wardrobes with badly fitting doors ostentatiously reading newspapers in parked cars; loose-handled pine veneer chiffoniers lurking in doorways; unhinged ottomans in internet cafes quite clearly hacking into email accounts. I am sure that my bookshelves have cracked the code in my diaries. It explains the knowing looks ...

Lust of the Flesh #4

Each morning, on Skye, my great-great Grandfather (and probably several Greats before him) ate half a teacup of coarse oatmeal for his breakfast. Boiling water was poured over the oats and the saucer laid on top of the cup for a few minutes to let the oatmeal steep. Then, whilst the oatmeal was still far from cooked, it would be eaten with a pinch of salt. My Demon Aunt (she of the famous Malteser Biscuits: Take seventeen family bags of Maltesers, crush them, add ten bars of melted chocolate, 2lbs of melted butter and a few biscuit crumbs, press into a tin, cover in more melted chocolate and decorate with Maltesers) said that the uncooked oatmeal would continue to swell in the stomach and kept Grandfather full all day.

So, there is a genetic connection for porridge being a Lust of the Flesh, but it is more than that. Other more fashionable breakfasts might have their moment in the morning sun - sliced banana and Greek yoghurt, Bircher Muesli, smoked salmon bagels - but nothing beats the silkiness of porridge, the almost jelly-like quality as it forms an island in a sea of milk or cream. Demerara sugar melts across its surface in golden puddles. It slips from the spoon, slides down my throat ... a hard-to-beat combination of a saintly good-start-to-the-day and sinful sensuality.

N.B. Never cover a lover in porridge - it's a bugger when it sets.